Other cultures and the gospel

A while ago a group of us visited a detention centre for people being deported from the UK to take a "service". This was the first time any of us had done anything like this so we really didn't know what to expect. The people at this detention centre are mostly on the way out of the country after any appeals/hearing etc. so only stay there for 3 to 5 days, their fate decided.

Even though half of us are from the house church expression of church we resorted to a more traditional style of event as we felt that would probably be more appropriate for the people we would be ministering to - it's what they would expect. About 40 people came to the service mostly African people but also a few from Asia. We had a wonderful time of praise and worship with them and used a drama to introduce the bible reading we were teaching from which was Luke 24:13 - 32 "The Road to Emmaus".

I had been asked to speak. I won't go into all the things I talked about, but thankfully God was really there and in spite of me, at the end when I asked if anyone wanted to surrender their lives to God - 5 people came forward for prayer!

Reflecting afterwards, it really made me think about the way that these people were so eager to embrace the hope that Jesus offers to us all and how hard-hearted our western cultures are in contrast. They aren't interested in Gen "X" or "Y" or whatever - most probably never heard of those sociological concepts. They were just hungry for God!

How my heart cries out for the people of our culture to embrace God in the same way!

John